The Arizona sentinel. [volume] (Arizona City [Yuma], Yuma County, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1872-1911, 1887-11-12
ROMANCE OF A THIMBLE.
The Story of "Uncle" Dolsen's
Early Love Affair.

Q "Uncle" Dolsen's chimney piece a
small but very heavy sewing thimble,
from which the outer plating of pre-
cious met;.a- had been stripped away
and the heavy base of brass left bat
tered, corroded and black. 1t stood
partially hidden amongst a variegated
array of bright ears of red and yellow
corn. wisps of golden barley and ex-
traordinary kernels of wheat, choice
samples of the last years harvest; and
these mingled with some bits of old
fashioned delf and an antique image or
two that betrayed the hand of the pot
ter rather than the sculptor-such bits
of bric-a-brac as would make glad the
heart of our devout aesthetic of to-day
had they been found on a like black
ened and disheveled mantle-piece in
any corner of the old world. instead of
in pioneer dwelling on the banks of
a Western river, for the smokes of
half century had found it nearly
as convenient to drift up the outside
as the inside of the old brick fireplace,
and the mud -chinked walls of the old
log house, the scanty pieces of furni-
turc and Uncle Dolsen's face had all
taken on smoky tone of coloring
that harmonized beautifully, as the
modern school of culture would put
it.
But the Thimblei There it stood,
day after day, through spring, sum-
20,
unless jostled an inch OF two to right
or left when the dry seeds were taken
down for planting or another choice
handful from the latest harvest was
added to the stock. For there were
no women folk around "Uncle" Dol
sens domicile to execute a semi-an-
nual maelstrom, otherwise known as
house-cleaning.
And there Uncle" Dolsen sat,
alone, when his days work was done,
in a great homemade arm chair on a
cushion of shriven corn husks, let
ting the simple incidents of his fifty |
years of rural life march past him |
in the dancing fire-glare, until the |
procession of events must have be- |
come as ~monotonous and mechanical |
as the movements of the wooden |
figures in the street musicians box. |
There he sat, until the ashes at his feet |
became so deep as 10 pain the sensi-
bililics of even bachelor housekeeping.
Then he would gather them up and
carry them out as tenderly as if they
were the sacred ashes of those memo
ries of the past that had fitted before |
him in the freight.
Everybody along the river knew
that Uncle Dolsen had had his early
love affair. for was he II single and
eccentric, but none knew the particu-
lars of it, although the events had all
transpired in the neighborhood.
Though the course of his love had not
run smooth its Interruptions were not
such as to catch the eye of the rural
gossips; but to "Uncle"- Dolsen, sit
ting by the fire-side in the ancestral
log house, they were events that had
turned the whole current of his life
and made him an ambitionless and
loveless old man.
Uncle" Dolsen's earliest memories
were of the intimacies that existed be-
tween his youthful self and the only
other child of his fathers household, a
bright-eyed sprite of girl of about
his own age, but SO utterly unlike him
in every feature and characteristic
that it was almestinpossib1e 80 regard
them as brother and sister. The
country life of the Two chill
dren was one in every thing, Janet go
ing with Van upon expeditions she
would never have undertaken had
there been any brothers or boy COM
panions. As it was he became Janet's
hero, as she became the object of all
his boyish chivalries. Together they
in every task and every ad-
venture, divided every pleasure and
shared every pam.
1t was thus until they had reached
those first years of boy and girlhood ]
when other love than that of brother
and sister disturbs the fancies of our
days, and Van and Janet,
who had often declared. with child
hood facility for adjusting all things, '
heir intention to be man and wife !
y hen they grew big. began to {
'ealize that in the natural order of t
events they were likely to make other {
that meant the sunder-
Hg Of that updefpe@ bond that had so ! z